Purpose

The purpose of this study was to better understand K-12 district leaders' reasoning and processes for selecting and deploying EdTech instructional products, including which, if any, types of data are used to support decision-making.

Design/methodology/approach

This multisite case study of educational technology (EdTech) decision-making comprises five purposely selected districts at the leading edge of EdTech innovation. The unit of analysis was a recent purchase they had made of an instructional, classroom-oriented digital product (defined as a product used by teachers and/or students in the classroom for the purposes of student learning). The key leader heading up the purchase was interviewed, as were other leaders and a teacher who were involved in the decision-making process.

Findings

The processes districts used to make their purchasing decisions involved teachers, district leaders and technical specialists who considered usability, usage data and alignment with student learning and interoperability, respectively. While in some cases there were plans to collect data on student learning outcomes, districts did not uniformly emphasize that in their decision-making processes. Instead, the type of educational technology tool that was purchased influenced whether or not districts planned to seek out student-level outcome data as evidence of the product's efficacy. For the purchases associated with access to content, school leaders considered usage or log data generated by the program itself as sufficient indication that the program is “working.” Where the software's functionality encompassed skill development, leaders stated future plans to look at student-level outcomes as a means for judging if the program “worked.”

Originality/value

Few accounts of district decision-making about the adoption of educational technology innovations are present in the literature. These five cases provide insight into the role evidence plays in decisions to adopt educational technology.

中文翻译：

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五个前沿 K-12 学区的教育科技创新决策过程

目的

本研究的目的是更好地了解 K-12 学区领导选择和部署 EdTech 教学产品的推理和流程，包括使用哪些类型的数据来支持决策。

设计/方法/方法

这个关于教育技术 (EdTech) 决策的多站点案例研究包括五个特意选择的处于教育技术创新前沿的地区。分析单位是他们最近购买的教学型、面向课堂的数字产品（定义为教师和/或学生在课堂上用于学生学习的产品）。负责采购的主要领导接受了采访，其他领导和参与决策过程的老师也接受了采访。

发现

学区用于做出购买决策的流程涉及教师、学区领导和技术专家，他们分别考虑了可用性、使用数据以及与学生学习和互操作性的一致性。虽然在某些情况下计划收集有关学生学习成果的数据，但各学区在决策过程中并未统一强调这一点。相反，购买的教育技术工具的类型会影响学区是否计划寻找学生水平的结果数据作为产品功效的证据。对于与访问内容相关的购买，学校领导认为程序本身生成的使用情况或日志数据足以表明程序“正在运行”。软件的功能包括技能开发，

原创性/价值

文献中很少有关于采用教育技术创新的地区决策的描述。这五个案例让我们深入了解证据在决定采用教育技术时所起的作用。